Song as Old as Rhyme
by Polly Little
Summary: Roderich is arrogant, desperately, damningly so, and that's why he doesn't realise he's fallen in love with her until it's too late. In which fairytale metaphors and character flaws lead Roderich to a surprising discovery. Canonverse.


Austria has always been arrogant, has always held his head high to support a crown he doesn't deserve even before he earnt it. Roderich knows this. His back aches from the weight of his own expectations.

He can be cruel, too. People are so difficult to understand, but that doesn't matter when he knows just the thread to tug to pull them to pieces, just the note to play to leave once majestic symphonies sounding dissonant and pretentious. Roderich isn't proud of this. His lips are stained with the taste of condescension, pressed thin where he fights to keep himself from speaking his opinions.

He sees their flinches when he speaks, disgust and fear fighting for dominance at the back of his eyes, and somewhere deep down he realises he'd rather stay forever silent than cause that again. But he doesn't. He's far too selfish.

So he practices, the same way Roderich drills scales into the piano, again and again and again until his wrists ache and he can get it right, and sometimes maybe they'll smile when they hear him, if not when they speak to him. Because Roderich is arrogant, and it is his worst sin and his saving grace.

He carves out a groove for himself in this way. He'll never be loved, and he'll never be feared, but it's better to be avoided than excluded, and better to spark disgust than pity. He's selfish and cold, and so unbelievably jealous that it would astound you just to hear him.

And of course he can't be lonely, because this is a choice he made for himself.

Roderich is arrogant, and in a fairytale this would be what dooms him. The cruel prince, alone in his castle, learning too late that the love he demands can only ever be earnt. But here, now, that wouldn't fit the narrative. Roderich has never demanded love. He's simply too proud to beg.

He knows, of course, that love isn't something that he can earn, when he errs too often and too far to be respected. He would like, then, to be left alone instead. He draws the curtains around the music room in the same way the canopies would be drawn around sleeping beauty's bed, and wonders whether to bake a cake for dinner.

If he thought about it at all, there would be something pathetic about his silhouette hunched small at the long, long dining room table, cutting a solitary slice from a cake he made himself to eat alone. He doesn't think about it, because only fools choose to analyse the scenery in their own lives, and his analysis would be inaccurate if that were his conclusion. While he's on his own, no one can demand he play softer, tread quieter, hold himself still – no one can take offense at his attempts at defence.

And of course he can't be lonely, because he has never once asked for company.

And then, of course, everything changes.

She sweeps into his home like a whirlwind, the conquered becoming the conqueror and every change an invasion. There is nowhere he can go that she isn't, it seems, and once stark and empty corners are suddenly full of life, her pine green eyes the most vivid thing in the house in decades.

Roderich, of course, is arrogant as ever. He expects things to remain the same, confident in his assumptions that no one would dare to change his most sacred spaces so quickly, so brashly. He relies on his reputation, and assumes the best, and –

And then one day he walks downstairs, and she's dusting the piano.

"What are you doing?" He gasps, as offended as he knows how.

She glances at him, once, dismissive. "You haven't eaten," she says, and then turns back to her task as if he doesn't matter, brown hair swinging behind her. "It's almost after noon."

"You're in my room," he says.

"They're _all_ your rooms, sir," she says, not even bothering to turn to speak to him. The _sir_ is perfunctory in nature, automatic in the way a hand jumps to a knife at a noise in the dark. It's intriguing. "This is your house."

It infuriates him. Not her words (she could say anything she liked. He's thick skinned like that), it's the way she doesn't seem to care what he says, like fire coursing through his veins. He's grown used to stepping carefully, and now that he forgets, it doesn't seem to matter at all. There's desert beneath his feet where once was rushing water, and he's wrong footed by how firm the ground feels.

"I'd like to play the piano now," he says, and is shocked at how weak it comes out.

"I'd like for you not to collapse of starvation in your own home, but we can't have everything. Go and get something to eat, and then maybe I'll be gone when you come back."

He leaves, and searches the kitchen for pastries. He may be arrogant, but he knows a losing battle when he sees one.

The change is sudden and alarming, and then after a while he barely notices it. He goes from eating alone, to eating with Hungary in the evenings, and he's shocked at how loud the lady snorts with laughter when he misjudges the conversation. This isn't the reaction he's used to at all.

She likes to hover in the next room when he plays, and sometimes when he passes her in the hallway he can hear her singing to herself. Erzebet is an awful singer, musically speaking, with the diction and control of any drunk soldier. He likes to hear her sing.

He catches himself hovering at the window when she goes for firewood. Her sleeves are rolled to her elbows and her hair pinned back, and the face she pulls when she swings the axe is the face she pulls when she tells him "if you stay in that room any longer, I'm moving the piano into the hallway" and when she winks at him, Roderich can't stop himself from looking. He assumes she doesn't mind, and isn't that a kind of arrogance in itself?

Is it arrogance, then, to assume she likes him at all? He doesn't dare breach the subject, for fear of pulling it to pieces, for fear of sounding pretentious. He isn't proud of this, but he's far too proud to question the obvious. That would look foolish.

Erzebet is beautiful, and if this were a fairytale, she would be what saves him. The innocent maiden braving the callous barbs of the prince, bringing him into something like redemption with the promise of a smile. He watches her swearing as she tries and fails to pull one muddy boot off after a hunt, and when the sunlight shines through the window and her teeth glint sharp, he realises she's far more of the wolf than she is little red riding hood.

Her teeth gleam sharp in the sunlight, and he realises she has carved out his cold dead heart and handed it back to him warm and pulsing, and she had always been the huntsman while he is the beast.

Roderich is arrogant, desperately, damningly so, and that's why he doesn't realise he's fallen in love with her until it's too late. She smiles with her eyes and asks him what he likes about the piece he's been playing recently, lets him stumble through all the wrong words as he answers and then complains to him about the dent in her buckler and how it forces her to overcompensate when sparring. She comes and find him specifically for the purpose of enjoying his company, and this isn't his arrogance telling him this, because he heard it directly from her own lips.

She doesn't laugh when he stumbles, verbally and physically, so often brought to his knees in front of her, so easily. She only ever offers him a hand up, and the angry bitter voice in the pit of his stomach has no choice but to stop yelling about how he wasn't so easily tripped before she lived with him, because he was never helped to his feet before.

Roderich can be cruel, and he's never watched himself so closely before. Erzebet is easy to understand, except he's never understood what she sees in him, and so he doesn't understand just what he'll say to unravel her, leaving the cadence of their conversation broken and stilted. His lips are already stained with future apologies, are pressed thin where he fights to keep himself from spilling all his secrets.

He hopes things will remain the same, scared of the alternatives however much that same fear sings under his skin with a voice that sounds like excitement, like anticipation, like belief. But he isn't going to push his luck, he's done with arrogance and attempting the impossible. He has her, here and now, and that is something impossible and beautiful in it's own right.

And of course, he can't be lonely, because he doesn't have to ask for company. He doesn't need to, turning around to her familiar smile and her hand on his shoulder. He doesn't know how he ever lived without this.

He relies on her now, and assumes the best, and –

And then one evening he walks upstairs and she's stretched out expectantly across his bed.

"You're in my room," he says bluntly, echoes of that first conversation ringing through his voice.

"They're _all_ your rooms, sir," she says, with her eyes fixed languidly on him. The _sir_ is a word he hasn't heard from her lips in years, but she's nothing but confident as she says it, smooth and slick like a hand gliding to a knife in the dark. "This is your house."

There's amusement in her voice and contentment in the slow rise and fall of her chest, and it sends fire coursing through his veins. He knows exactly what she expects from him, and it's as much of a relief as it is a weight across his shoulders. He wants to give her this feeling, this freedom, the way everything she touches blooms to life like water flowing through a desert and carving its mark into the bones of the earth, the way she dug her name into the earth of his heart.

"You're naked," he says, and there's a shake in his voice that he didn't intend to be there.

"Yes, I suppose I am," she says, indolent across the purple of his bedsheets, tanned skin shifting against his pillows as she rolls her shoulders back, her hips sinking into his mattress as her toes curl into the blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed. "Is that a problem?"

He swallows, mouth dry. "Not for me, no," he says, and then he realises what this is and all his illusions are shattered. "You don't have to, you know."

"Excuse me?" She asks, green eyes narrowed.

"You shouldn't," he tries, and he wishes he was mistaken, that he could be arrogant and hedonistic and delight in the fact of the beautiful woman all but telling him she wants him here and now. That's the thing, though. She hasn't told him that she wants this at all. "I don't want you to feel pressured into something you don't want. I – I value what we have, and I don't want it to be ruined because I couldn't keep my eyes off of you and made you think you owed me something."

It's not something he wants to say, but it's something he needs to say. He would hate himself otherwise.

Her eyes narrow further, but when she speaks her voice is soft "Roderich," she says. "I don't think I _owe_ you anything. What I think is, I'd like to see you come over here, and making my frantic dash across the house in nothing but a dressing gown worthwhile. So: are you coming?"

"Yes," he breathes, and it surprises even him how eager he sounds – he's never really been very good at showing emotion.

She raises one, imperious hand and beckons. Her teeth gleam sharp in the candlelight, and he knows he hasn't ruined anything when he answers her summons.

Roderich is arrogant where Erzebet is clever, cold where she is sharp as ice, and when she smiles at him he thinks that maybe _comfortable together_ is better than _happily ever after._

**A/n: written for the wonderful Gayle. Austria is probably my favourite character, and it is absolutely disgusting that I haven't posted anything this pretentious about him before. Reviews are always a delight (c:**


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